VISA announced that it is partnering with Flocash, selected by FT Africa as the fastest growing fintech of 2022, to promote digital capabilities for African SMEs through digital payments, supplier solutions and access to financial services. The first step in this partnership is the launch of Flostore, which is powered by a Visa digital wallet and the Flocash pan-African payment platform. Flostore, according to the announcement, can help small businesses accept digital payments, manage supplies and access financial services across Africa. Flocash and Visa will work together to embed financing in payments and bring the element of analytics, bookkeeping and reconciliation to small businesses through Visa’s dynamic underwriting capabilities that include buy-now-pay-later structures.
Visa is committed to expanding the digitization of payments across Africa. With partners like Flocash, our goal is to enable African businesses to access our payments ecosystem and technologies to enable them to serve their customers innovatively and efficiently. This partnership with Flocash, as well as the launch of Flostore, are an important step towards achieving this goal. Flocash says that digitization of the lending process enables banks to streamline their inefficient processes for SME lending and deliver value to their customers. 82% of small and micro business respondents to Visa’s annual outlook survey in 2022 indicated a preference for digital payment options. SMEs account for 90% of all businesses in Africa but have an annual financing gap of over US $136 billion according to IFC. A digitized SME sector will unlock the huge market potential of the African continent underpinned by rapid population growth.